Nothing major here, bar some relatively obscure trivia that needn’t stop you getting the answers. How did you do?
Note for newcomers: The Times offers prizes for Saturday Cryptic Crosswords. This blog is for last week’s puzzle, posted after the competition closes. So, please don’t comment here on this week’s Saturday Cryptic.
Definitions are in bold and underlined.
| Across | |
| 1 | Displaying deplorable timidity in fashion knowledge (7) |
| CHICKEN – CHIC + KEN. | |
| 5 | Going around airport after vacation, drop case (6) |
| DATIVE – DIVE (drop) going around AT (AirporT, after vacation). | |
| 8 | Abroad, you back energy-filled dance music, it’s said (9) |
| UTTERANCE – UT (TU=you, when abroad in France, back) + TRANCE (NHO: a genre of music, apparently) filled with E. | |
| 9 | Way to pen line for poet (5) |
| PLATH – PATH to pen L. Sylvia Plath I’ve heard of, but I’m not familiar with her work. |
|
| 11 | Warning partners in game to suppress fury (5) |
| SIREN – S + N (bridge partners) to suppress IRE. | |
| 12 | What may follow theme song, with note playing after verse (9) |
| VARIATION – V (verse) + ARIA (song) + TI (note: do, re, mi …) + ON (playing, on the radio say). | |
| 13 | Evidence that insect has drunk alcohol, or giraffe? (8) |
| RUMINANT – RUM IN ANT (ho ho). | |
| 15 | Rolls maybe wrapped in protective cover, something baker may use (6) |
| BICARB – CAR wrapped in BIB. | |
| 17 | Blackmail, say, is wrong no longer? (6) |
| EXTORT – it used to be a tort, but not any longer. Now it’s an EX-TORT! Some will remember Monty Python and the “ex-parrot” sketch. |
|
| 19 | Possible cause of complaint from European bitten by tailless camel (8) |
| BACTERIA – E bitten by BACTRIAN. Bactrians are the camels with two humps. |
|
| 22 | Regular servings of grub with rank taste (9) |
| GUSTATION – GrUb + STATION. | |
| 23 | Fat gastronome spilling guts after end of meal (5) |
| PUDGE – PUD (pudding; end of meal) + GastronomE. | |
| 24 | Son, boring buffoon, shows surprising development (5) |
| TWIST – S boring TWIT. | |
| 25 | Fluctuation of fortune, as seen in iconic picture (9) |
| NOSFERATU – anagram, flucuation: (FORTUNE AS). A 1922 silent film about a vampire. Remade in 2024. |
|
| 26 | Powerful Persian seizing power in country (6) |
| CYPRUS – CYRUS seizing P. Details of Cyrus here. |
|
| 27 | Oasis perhaps with boundless pond by area in desert (7) |
| ABANDON – A (area) + BAND (Oasis, perhaps) + pONd. | |
| Down | |
| 1 | Hollywood A-lister just entertains cruciverbalists, one hoping for big hits? (13) |
| CRUISERWEIGHT – CRUISE (Tom, of course) + RIGHT (just) entertains WE (crossword people). | |
| 2 | Temporary buzz word plugged by newspaper (7) |
| INTERIM – IN TERM (buzz word) plugged by I (a newspaper). | |
| 3 | Sacred work put on the canvas by painter before noon (5) |
| KORAN – KO (put on the canvas) + RA (artist) + N (noon). | |
| 4 | Nobody airs unimpressive spectacle (3-5) |
| NON-EVENT – NONE VENT (nobody airs). You have to keep “nobody airs” together – no lifting or separating this time – to see why “vent” doesn’t have a final “s”. For those who say “none” is singular – I feel your pain! |
|
| 5 | Dull, arid hedges are running wild (6) |
| DREARY – DRY hedges EAR (ARE, running wild). | |
| 6 | Leading journalist expelling Democrat — one working with Bush? (9) |
| TOPIARIST – TOP DIARIST, expelling D. Cute definition! |
|
| 7 | Funds for journey through Thailand’s capital roughly supporting one (7) |
| VIATICA – VIA (through) + T (Thailand’s capital) + I (one) + CA (roughly). Not a familiar word. It’s the Latin plural of “viaticum”. Plural indicating one journey, more than one traveller presumbly. |
|
| 10 | Banker had to move and go for a spin on the road (9,4) |
| HANDBRAKE TURN – anagram, to move: (BANKER HAD) + TURN (go). | |
| 14 | Strong current answer probing what the wicked get? I’m not sure (9) |
| NOREASTER – A (answer) probing NO REST (what the wicked get!) + ER (I’m not sure). | |
| 16 | Family member bags diced sage in medicinal powder (8) |
| MAGNESIA – MA bags anagram, diced: (SAGE IN). | |
| 18 | Are witnesses providing snappy dresses? (7) |
| TESTIFY – TESTY (snappy) dresses IF (providing). | |
| 20 | Dismiss article in Bild about king, say (3-4) |
| RED-CARD – RED (reversal of DER, which is an article, “the”, in German newspapers like Bild) + CARD (king, say). | |
| 21 | What happens before the weekend starts to exclude right fans (6) |
| FIENDS – before the weekend, FRI[day] ENDS, excluding R. Friday has to end before Saturday arrives. The parsing of this tested me! |
|
| 23 | Pair of Greek characters in religious artwork (5) |
| PIETA – PI + ETA, both Greek letters. | |
Wasn’t particularly happy with 4d as noted in the blog. 18d also gives me a problem with making ARE WITNESSES a definition of TESTIFY. Would it not make more sense to say WITNESS PROVIDING …?
The people who (are witnesses/testify) in the trial must wait outside the court until called.
Thanks that explains it.
Well over an hour for this one but I enjoyed the challenge.
NHO VIATICA making its TfTT debut today. Collins has it as ‘rare’ and the POD has it as ‘archaic’ so I’m not surprised I didn’t know it.
GUSTATION also seemed new although I note that its one and only appearance here outside a Mephisto was in a puzzle I blogged myself in 2019.
This went on the too hard pile for checking today. The bottom section with the crossing 26ac, 21dn, 25ac caused the trouble. I couldn’t get away from Syria being the country with a P in – I had no idea that a Sypria couldn’t be a powerful Persian – or, indeed, that a Cyrus was one. I may have got Fiends if I’d had the crossing N from Nosferatu but that was never going to arrive. Thanks for clearing it all up.
BICARB and VIATICA were my last two in, causing me some problems, as I’ve NHO the latter and refer to the former as Bicarbonate of Soda when baking. The rest wasn’t too bad – I liked the long anagram at 10d, though it was a bit of a poser as also unfamiliar. I nearly fell apart with an unparseable PODGE – the penny only dropped when I was submitting it online after solving on paper. No problem with the wordplay in 4d, as nobody would actually say ‘none vents’ in natural speech anyway – it would be ‘not one’ or ‘no one’.
Quite. ‘None’ is both singular and plural, and in fact the former is now rarer. I was accused of making a grammatical error recently when I wrote ‘none of them is’!
Enjoyably tricky this one. VIATICA the only unknown.
Well I got there. Sort of. I used aids to confirm some of the unknowns GUSTATION, CRUISERWEIGHT, CY(p)RUS. I was so sure 25a was an anagram that I persevered, but really?? I read its whole Wiki entry to work out why I should have heard of this particular 103 year old, German language film that has mostly been destroyed? Although I learn all my random facts here so I’ll add this to them. Many of the clues made no sense without a bit more direction, until a few crossing letters appeared, there being a long list of relatives, 24 Greek letters, any number of protective covers etc to choose from. This felt a bit like hard work but not unenjoyable.
Relied on the wordplay for the unknown VIATICA and MAGNESIA and didn’t parse FIENDS, but no major problems otherwise.
Thanks branch and setter.
FOI Pieta
LOI Magnesia
COD Topiarist
33.14
Struggled to get started for quite a while but the (medicinal) drugs Im taking clicked in and the accelerator pedal was metaphorically depressed.
However, ended with PODGE for PUDGE. Couldn’t parse it but difficult to look past it especially as I am not sure I am very familiar with PUDGE as opposed to PUDGY.
Otherwise a recent acquaintance with NOSFERATU through these things helped.
It wasn’t perfectly smooth but I really did like BICARB.
Thanks Bruce and setter
35 minutes. Not as hard as last week’s Saturday puzzle though I couldn’t work out the NON-EVENT parsing (singular v. plural) till coming here and had to assume TRANCE was a sort of ‘dance music’. I had come across the singular of VIATICA before; guess where? Yes, I liked the RUM IN ANT too.
Thanks to Bruce and setter
7d. Thank you for pointing out about VIATICA being plural and how that works for the definition – I’d not noticed that.
20d. I don’t think it’s correct to say “in German newspapers like Der Bild”. I wouldn’t normally mention this, but in case someone new to crosswords is trying to follow the parsing, and is confused by that “Der”…
I think in English we should just say “in German newspapers like Bild” – as in the surface of the clue. The newspaper is always just known as “Bild”.
But in German, I think they would say “Die Bild” for the newspaper (feminine). Which is really an implied shortening of “Die Bild-Zeitung” (because Zeitung -newspaper- is feminine). The word meaning picture “Das Bild” is neuter. But, I don’t think it would be the masculine “Der Bild”.
Thanks. Amended,
Gosh, I don’t do German, so I didn’t notice. Glad I don’t do German; most of the time they do English but I was well stuffed in the Black Forest one day as I hadn’t a clue what was on the breakfast menu and no-one spoke a word of English. Oh well, serves me right for being a monoglot (apart from schoolboy French.)
8a Utterance. I thought that NHO Trance (music) was obscure, unless you do it yourself NOT ME, no Dad Dancing here!
23a Pudge; didn’t think this was a word but it is in the dictionary and the Cheating Machine.
25a Nosferatu, very very well forgotten but not NHO as is in CM so must have come up before.
7d NHO Viatica, nor has this spellchecker, but it was gettable.
I stopped after an hour after completing only 2/3 of this, but when I restarted some hours later I only needed another 20 minutes to finish it. And I thought it was absolutely superb, with some obscure entries very fairly clued (VIATICA, for example, or CRUISERWEIGHT, which I did not know), but everything a bit tricky and very satisfying. The surface readings are quite good and not the nonsense that they sometimes turn out to be in other puzzles — that adds significantly to the elegance of the puzzle.
Incidentally, about the “der” discussion above: I live in Germany, and the newspaper is called just Bild or die Bild-Zeitung, as Peter said. If you were referring to an article in this rag, you would say it was “in der Bild-Zeitung”, but this “der” is the dative form of “die” required by the preposition “in”, not the masculine nominative definite article. I gather the explanation for 20dn was edited after Peter’s comment, since it is perfectly all right now.